The Arabs point to this pillar as Lot’s wife. M. de Saulcy has written very ingeniously to prove that it really and truly is Lot’s wife. And, to do the Frenchman justice, I should add that he really did prove it—to his own satisfaction. I dare say, however, that he utterly failed to convince any of his readers. There have been men in all the ages who found in this pillar, or some other one like it, the veritable Mrs. Lot. Josephus relates the Scriptural incident of Lot’s wife being turned into salt, and then says of the pillar of salt: “I have seen it, and it remains to this day.” Clement of Rome, Irenaeus, and Leland all speak of Lot’s wife still standing as a pillar of salt. One says she still “retains her members entire,” and another says that as fast as any part of this pillar is washed away, it is supernaturally restored. That Lot’s wife disobeyed God, and was forthwith turned into a pillar of salt, I do not doubt. That this pillar of salt will ever be located and identified, I have no hope. Let us again recur to the question, “Why is this sea so salt?” Around the east side and southern end of the sea, the whole country seems to be composed largely of salt. “The salt hills run round for several miles nearly east and west, at a height of from three hundred to four hundred feet, level atop, and not very broad; the mass being a body of rock-salt, capped with a bed of gypsum and chalk. Dislocated, shattered, furrowed into deep clefts by the rains, or standing out in narrow, ragged buttresses, they add to the weird associations of all around. Here and there, harder portions of the salt, withstanding the weather while all around them melts and wears off, rise up as isolated pillars. In front of the ridge, the ground is strewn with lumps and masses of salt, through which streamlets of brine run across the long muddy flat towards the beach, which itself sparkles in the sun with a crust of salt, shining as if the earth had been sown with diamonds.” A sea whose bed and beach are salt would naturally be brackish, even if it had an outlet. During the rainy season this sea has probably a thousand tributaries, all of which bring in more or less salt. It is always receiving salt. Bear in mind the fact that this Sea of Death has no outlet. All of the water is taken up by evaporation. In midsummer the heat around it is fearful to contemplate. The rays from the noon-day’s sun are almost like streams of fire. The heat is simply intense. The water vaporizes, is taken up into the air, and is there condensed and poured out in showers of rain on the parched hills around, to revive the vigor of vegetation. As Thompson would say, “The clouds pour their garnered fullness down.” Of course the sun takes up only the oxygen and hydrogen, leaving all salt and other impurities behind. Hence the sea never fills up; hence also the water that is left behind is becoming more and more salt as the years pass by.